


Nightfall

by JonathansNightFlight



Series: Thirty flavours of falling with you [5]
Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Character Death, Deathfic, Hannibal Loves Will, M/M, Mild Gore, Old Age, Sad and Sweet, Will Loves Hannibal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-04
Updated: 2017-10-04
Packaged: 2019-01-08 19:47:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 829
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12260919
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JonathansNightFlight/pseuds/JonathansNightFlight
Summary: 19 years after the fall.Hannibal is dying. Something slow but insidious, unstoppable. Will gifts him one final win.It is part of the Thirty Flavours series, but heed the warnings and please skip if appropriate.





	Nightfall

Hannibal gasps awake. Silent as he can, he gets up. Pushes the covers back. He moves slow but steady, using the space between breaths to counter the faint tremors in his limbs. Three breaths later he rolls to the edge of the bed, places his feet on the floor and stands.

The floor bites like shattered ice. Hannibal reels and has to close his eyes against the unwelcome flood of memories. Naked feet on ice, frozen rivers, the gaping mouth of a cave. Fire too hot, that felt like ice. He opens his eyes and has to remind himself that there is no teardrops frozen on his eyelashes.

The bathroom is fitted with a dimmer. He turns it on the lowest setting. For a long moment he stands in front of the mirror and takes in his naked form. Without his glasses, the outlines blur. Easy to mould. He lets his mind float, reverse time; he makes his body shift. The receding bulk of his shoulders replenished, the area around his torso tight and thick with muscle. Regained are the inches around his hips, his spine straight, elongated upwards, forearms thickened, veins standing out; cock full, twitching eagerly against his thigh with the virility of youth. Hannibal smiles at his flight of fancy, and traces the smile on the mirror.

He lets the shower run - a splendid affair, boasting multidirectional water jets - and once the steam thickens at the back of his throat, he steps in.

The bathroom resembles something out of the tropics by the time he emerges. He can’t tell at which point Will joined him, but he can feel his presence as he drags the towel against his skin, lazy, softened, even before he seeing the familiar sock of curls emerge behind him in the mirror.

It is a testament to their long years of peace that he can’t tell that something is off until Will raises his head to meet his eyes in the mirror. He has to squint, tracing the other’s face - for the fleeting moment that felt like a scream but Will has already turned away and there is a hand between his shoulder blades and then white - cold - searing agony.

Before Hannibal’s control kicks in his body spasms backwards in pure, misguided instinct, lashing against the pain and driving the full 4 inches of curved steel fully inside his ribcage.

And then Will has holds him tight in an arm lock. The seconds tick as blood trickles around the knife. A drop landing on the floor, and then another and another, in quick succession. An aborted breath that tastes of iron.

And Will steadily, softly, lowers Hannibal to the ground. As Hannibal chokes between two more non-breaths he feels his left lung collapsing. He opens his mouth as he feels Will wrap his hand around the knife handle - a tiny scrape against a bone. “Don’t” and then a soundless “oh” as Will pulls the knife out. It detaches with a sucking noise and a hiss, and then bubbling as blood rushes, frothing, from the mouth of the wound.

Hannibal contorts his torso, fingers clawing against Will, trying to reach behind, stem the flow, keep the life in, let the breath out. But Will’s hold doesn’t give. Hannibal’s hands slip to his side and he feels his knee buckling and cold acid and dread and his brain, treacherous in the end, flashes images of the ones who fought, in denial, to their end - eyes frozen wide in surprise.

There is wheezing, too loud, and Hannibal moves his lips around consoling words but only pink froth comes out.

Will frames his face with both hands, squeezes, until Hannibal is forced to look at him and Hannibal’s world is reduced, expanded, to Will’s eyes - pupils floating in slivers of blue, wide-blown until there is nothing but the darkness in the center. 

“Don’t try to edit this”, Will’s lips move asynchronously to the sound of the words “Just feel.”

Will fingers are everywhere, holding and soothing and burying themselves in Hannibal’s hair and pulling - silvery white, now thick with red. Will’s body a solid weight on top of him, firm, enveloping, real. Lips kissing whatever they can reach, lips, the bridge of a nose, both his temples. And then apart again, openly staring, splitting him through and through. Consuming him. Welcoming him home.

“I love you”, Will tells him.

Hannibal sees his reflection in Will’s eyes, perfect.

The pain, ice-cold as it spread inwards, gives way to numbness.

His focus becomes fine, like the point of a needle. He drinks it all in, parched. The tiny tremors of Will’s pupil. The wrinkles of their every laugh and every frown. The sticky wetness of their blood-lust and the -

he blinks once, twice, unseeing, before he realises that the darkness has closed in. His head lolls, neck succumbing, and it is like falling all over again,

He feels Will’s lips on his forehead.

And then there is nothing.

**Author's Note:**

> As the parts of the series are in chronological disarray, there will be more parts in the series.
> 
> But there will also be a part after this one, chronologically.
> 
> I love them both, I really do.


End file.
